Journal #14: Relational Development

    After a bit of pondering between two potential victims to use for this assignment, I decided on my childhood best friend, Melanie, since we've gone through essentially every stage and that gives me plenty of information to work with.

    When it comes to the initiation stage, we were both very young, probably about 5 or 6, so we connected solely because our parents forced us into a playdate. So, since we were similar in age (Melanie was born in October 2006, and I February 2007) and both had the same average childhood interests like playing with dolls or stuffed animals, it was no surprise we connected. The experimentation stage began largely in this type of play as well. Melanie had a ton of stuffed animals, and we even had some of the same ones, so we'd make up little stories about them as children usually do.

    As our friendship progressed further into the intensifying phase, I'd say that was about when we were 9 to 10 years old. Since we attended different schools and had only met because our parents were childhood friends, we were always begging our mothers to let us hang out on weekends. I probably spent more time during the weekends at Melanie's house than my own some weeks. That, of course, progressed to further begging for sleepovers and all that jazz.

    Integration is more romance-centered than Melanie and I's friendship, but the bonding I can see some examples for. The "announcing to the world" part reminds me of how I would always respond to people in elementary school when they'd tell me I was their best friend: "Actually, Melanie is my best friend, but you can be one of my non-best friends." The fact that people still wanted to be my friend afterwards is a mystery even to me.

    In terms of how we gradually drifted apart, the differentiating phase began largely as we entered middle school. We still attended separate schools, but the two of us started to delve into our own interests. Melanie was big on YouTubers (meanwhile, I was banned from using YouTube until about 6th grade) and she was always using Tik Tok to the point where a hangout session was 90% comprised of her showing off unfunny videos on her phone that I'd pretend to laugh at. Meanwhile, I wasn't much better, as I entered my anime phase and was constantly babbling about shows Melanie had no interest in.

    Those differentiating interests led to our circumscribing phase. We talked on the phone occasionally, but our calls would always end with excuses- "Oh, my mom just called me for dinner." "I need to go walk the dogs, goodbye for tonight." "I have homework to take care of." Before, if something like that came up, we'd call each other back right after. Our physical hangout sessions also started slowing down.

    The stagnation period began in freshman year of high school when we finally got to attend the same school. Both of us were overjoyed about this, of course, but we only had one class together, Spanish II. Since we saw one another every day in Spanish class, we never really spent time together outside of it. After all, we didn't have much in common, so about 50 minutes a day was really all the conversation we could muster. Still, neither of us had other friends in that class, so we were essentially forced to work together in group projects since I'm an anxious wreck with new people and Melanie, knowing me for so long, decided to help by partnering with me.

    Then, the dreaded avoidance stage. Melanie made friends with another girl in our class, and they slowly began to partner up for activities. Since I wasn't too keen on working with others, I opted to just work by myself and do twice the work. As sophomore year began, we had no classes together, but neither of us really spoke regardless. We didn't text or hang out, and if we saw one another in the halls, the most we gave one another was a head nod. 

    Although the website said that the termination stage does not need to be a formally written or delivered breakup proposal, I would say the official end of Melanie and I's friendship would be in mid-sophomore year when I sent her a text telling her how I felt about the way we were growing apart and thanking her for always been there for me. I told her that I ultimately couldn't consider her my best friend anymore, or even a friend at all, but I just wanted to tell her formally in case she wanted to try and make things work again. Nope. She replied, "okay, I agree", and that was that.

    Our friendship didn't exactly follow the model to a T, but I was able to find some loopholes and meld it into fitting the requirements.